Let's Don't!

Chub the Tub, twistin' like he did 52 summers ago.

"Chubby Checker wants to help set at twist record", reads the story header in my local San Diego daily.  Geezus, please, NO!  Is my initial reaction.  You're 71 years old, Chub.  You've been twisting every last freaking ounce of fame and scratch out of that stupid gyration for more than FIFTY years!  LET'S DON'T TWIST AGAIN LIKE WE DID LAST SUMMER!  I'm begging you!

It's that time of year.  State and county fairs are ready to welcome lovers of cotton candy, deep fried Snickers bars, corndogs and folks who dig burned out rock n' roll acts.

  

Actually, I'm sure that Chubby (aka Ernest Evans) is plenty tired of doing the "dance sensation that is no longer sweeping the nation" but, like all of us, there are bills to pay, ex-wives and children to do right by and probably a bartender and bookie or two to take care of.  It's a job that pays well and involves no heavy lifting. The toughest part is pretending to have fun as you crank out the same song year after year  while balancing your checkbook and planning your vacation. 

Spending more than ten years of my erstwhile radio career on three different oldies stations, I had the chance to observe more than a few of these rock n' roll dinosaurs perform.  Local disc jockeys are often required to show up for these shows to introduce acts that are staples of the station's playlist.  It's not bad enough that you have to listen to the mostly insipid lyrics from your own teenage years--and maybe even break out in zits again-- you must also witness the sad demise of these entertainers as they grow old and tired.  Some, with lots of hits under their belt, have plenty of songs to break up the monotony but others-- "one hit wonders',  if you will-- are doomed to pad a thin artistic portfolio with songs no one ever cared  about.  When they finish with their one and only big hit it's time to hit the exit and take the act down the road to the next county fair gig or oldies blowout.   I was actually happy for Bill Haley when he died.  Never again would he have to give a downbeat to some re-tread Comets as they kicked off "Rock Around the Clock" for the bazillionth time.  The man had suffered enough.  

When Rick Nelson dared to stray from his string of 50's and 60's hits during a show at Madison Square Garden in the 1970's, he got booed off the stage.  He did manage to get one more hit record out of the humiliation when "Garden Party" sold a million copies.  

"I went to a garden party, reminisced with my old friends

A chance to share old memories and play our songs again

When I got to the garden party they all knew my name

But no one recognized me I didn't look the same"

Singers have a hard time understanding that people who pay money to see them perform want to hear the hits.  Artists, naturally become bored with songs they have already made popular and want to introduce new material.  The most talented understand that it is a delicate tap dance to expose unfamiliar music to an audience.  It can be done only when the hunger for the hits has been sated.  Then it may be safe to slip a new tune into the performance. 

So, old Chub the Tub will have to set the Twist record without me.  I'm afraid that I have oldies poisoning and am unable to participate.  

"If you gotta play at garden parties I wish you a lot a' luck

But if memories were all I sang I'd rather drive a truck"

Couldn't have said it better myself, Rick.  I'm fairly certain he is only doing new material at that big sock hop in the sky.

Rick Nelson: May 8,1940-December 31, 1985

Don't Worry It's NOT Your Fault!

Thank God!  It's not my fault.  That adipose tissue orbiting my equator is the product of a DISEASE according to the nation's largest physician organization.  Obesity is now officially NOT YOUR FAULT!  See your doctor and let the American Medical Association assume the guilt, but save some for your parents.  As we all know, parents are responsible for just about every problem life tosses our way. 

Looks like it needs mayo.

I couldn't help noticing the curiously juxtaposed story about doctors declaring yet one more modern problem as a "disease" as I opened the paper a couple of mornings ago.  There was the report of actor James Gandolfini, TV's Tony Soprano, dying of heart failure after eating a whopping big meal  of fried foods and copious amounts of booze while vacationing in Italy.  It was just above the story of the AMA's declaration of gluttony as an illness.

REALLY?!  There is nothing to prevent us from picking up that double-decker ham sandwich?  No way to make us simply drop that fork, pass on the pie, and put the ice cream back in the refrigerator?  It must be that damn disease talking!

How did we get from a society that took on the responsibility of saving the world from Hitler, Tojo, and a variety of nutjobs in the Kremlin to one that can't wait to point the finger toward any vice, foible or offense as long as it is away from us.  Everybody is a victim.  We are no longer in control of our own destiny.

Maybe I'm being judgemental.  I can't help it.  I was raised that way.  It's my parents' fault, dammit!

I'm no doctor, but I play one on this blog and it is my considered opinion that a disease is an illness you are born with or contract by accident and cannot control.  Drinking too much and eating too much are physical and psychological addictions that can be overcome through something we used to call willpower.  When we want to look and feel our best it is within our abilities to simply put down the glass or knife and fork and get "well".  

In the words of Dean Wormer:  "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son."  If our doctors are no longer willing to call us "Tubby" who is going to stand between us and that plate of fries?

Oh….who cares.

Is the crash cart on stand-by?  I'm goin' in!

Help yourself…it's a disease.

Sunday On The Deck With Dad

(My brother, Steve, now retired from the newspaper business, wrote this 23 years ago.  Our dad has been gone for more than 18 years but he speaks to me nearly every day.  These days, for a change,  I listen.  I think Steve does too.)


     "There's a deranged duck in the pond," my dad informs me matter-of-factly.
It's Sunday afternoon.  Father's Day.  We are standing one story above the ground on the narrow deck of my parents' condo squinting out into the glary light.  It is hot and breezy, the sky a dizzying whirl of blue and cirrus clouds.
   
     My dad, who is retired and has time on his hands, keeps a close watch on the ducks these days as they come and go in the small lake out beyond the manicured lawn behind the condo complex.  He counts the ducklings ("Snapping turtles got most of them this year.") and enjoys what, to his admittedly inexpert eye, seem to be the vagaries of duck social life.
   
     If there's a weird duck out there, I'm sure my dad knows about it.  When he points out the wayward fowl in question--a lone duck, diver, he says--I observe him for a while too.  He (or is it a she?) swims erratically around the lake avoiding the other ducks.  My dad thinks maybe it has lost its mate and is grief-stricken.  Through binoculars, the duck looks to me to be young and scrawny and glassy-eyed, maybe a little disheveled (a tuft of feathers is is askew on its head).  Dangerous, I think.  A loner, a rebel.  The John Hinckley or the Travis Bickle of the duck world.
 
      Hinckley Duck goes away eventually, paddling with a sudden purpose (off to buy a handgun?) toward a distant corner of the lake and out of sight.  Our thoughts and conversation drift to other things.
 
      I have been thinking a lot about the old man lately, and about the inexorability of genes.
   
     There was a rebellious time when I thought I had little in common with my dad, and I don't think he knew quite what to make of me.  If there's one thing he can't stand in the world it's a smark-aleck.  "Stay away from that guy.  He's a smart-aleck," was a warning I heard repeatedly as a kid.

     Dad is your basic solid-citizen---a patient, portly Ward Cleaver type interested in insurance, real estate, the crops, golf, washing the car, moderation and fairness.  He is cursed, however, with two kids who are Eddie Haskells.  Classic smart-alecks.  My brother is a big city DJ, and I'm a small town newspaper drone--jobs for un-solid citizens--two businesses fraught with cynics, burn-outs, booze-hounds and other unsavory characters.

     At one point, I think my dad dreamed that I could be a golf pro.  He bought me golf clubs and got me started playing when I was little.  I was pretty good and he kept encouraging me.  Of course I gave it up in high school.

     I was a brooding, solitary, wiseacre kid and I've become a brooding, semi-solitary, wiseacre adult.  Lately though, in the mornings before I have had time to activate my arsenal of self-delusions, I am often startled by the slightly puffy countenance returning my myopic gaze in the mirror, "Dad." I think. Time and circumstances ( and booze) work their magic on a face, but genes will out.  I notice, too, I am taking new pleasure in things like washing the car and mowing the yard.  Perhaps moderation and a resumption of my golf career are next.

     Dad has gotten jolly in retirement, though, to be honest, the last few years have not been especially kind to him.   A man who, as I recall, was never sick a day in his life had barely said goodbye to the everyday work grind when he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, then diabetes.  He developed an ulcer, needed back surgery, spent the better part of a winter in the hospital or flat on his back at home.

     My family is small but not what I imagine most people would consider particularly close-knit.  Much is left unsaid between us.  We share, rightly or wrongly, a distrust of anybody who talks too openly about his feelings, and sense that life's important stuff, its essential truths, are ineffable.  Maybe it's this Midwestern reticence,  but I never heard my dad complain through any of his troubles.  (He will be embarrassed, of course, that I'm committing any of this to paper.)

     I thin he's having a good year this year, I'm happy to say.  He's able to golf again.  His White Sox are winning (he's a lifelong fan; naturally, to be contrary, I became a Cubs fan).  Most of all, he seems comfortable with himself--untortured by regret--which, I imagine, must be the best part of growing old. He's done OK.

     When it's time to leave, my dad walks out to the parking lot to see me off.  Night has begun to crouch down around the lake and the white brick condos.  My folks decided to move to this place when the house got to be too much for them to care for,  and I sense they are just now starting to feel at home here.  It still seems foreign to me.  We stand by the car for a moment as the insects whir incessantly from the shimmering trees.  He notes with some pride that I am keeping my car clean.

     "Happy Father's Day.  And thanks," I say for the final time, and we shake hands this Sunday.  Father's Day.

     " Another day long gone," he says to me cheerfully.  And in my head on the quiet drive home my father's voice echoes back to me as my own.

Steve Copper, June 26, 1990

   

Feeling Lucky

I'm lucky.  If you're honest you most likely realize that you are too.  Of course there are times when things don't seem to be going as planned, but it's all relative and we accept it.  Most of life's important stuff has a way of working out.

This week my wife and I had a chance to tour Rady Children's Hospital here in San Diego.  It is nationally recognized as a fine facility and we're fortunate to have it.  For several years I had broadcast my radio show from the hospital during annual fund raising events and ever since we have been donors.  It was wonderful to see some of the fantastic new additions that have been made during the past few years.  Both of us came away from the tour feeling exceedingly glad to have helped in a small way and lucky that neither of our kids had ever needed the the hospital.   Also,  we were hopeful that our grandson would advance to adulthood without ever seeing Rady's interior.

Naturally,  as we walked the wards we saw many kids and their families who have not been blessed with good health.  The cancer patients, accident victims, and kids awaiting transplants are heartbreaking to see.  Nobody, especially a kid, deserves to be dealt such a hand.  Their families deserve better too, not that they are inclined to complain.  The strength of character and the optimism of most all of them is inspiring to see.  They don't want pity, they simply want to be "normal" again.

As I mentioned, I'm feeling lucky.  I just spent the day at Legoland with my grandson Dan and had a terrific time but couldn't help thinking about the kids and families I saw earlier this week.  All I can do is enjoy my good fortune and donate whenever I can.

No doubt there is a children's hospital somewhere near you.  See if you can share your luck.  Write 'em a check and help a kid.  You'll feel good about it.  Come on, you're feeling lucky.